C/Zmud Mapping Tips
CMUD Mapping Tips The CMUD automapper is a powerful tool, if properly set up. It is rather finicky, and its 'autosetup' routine is not really up to the task of successfully mapping Dawn. Once properly setup you will find yourself exploring and speed-walking around the mud! How the Automapper works The CMUD automapper works by capturing all output from the mud, and parsing it for patterns which match whatever it thinks look likes like: room name, room description and room directions. It STARTS looking for pattern matches once you send a direction command to the mud, and it stops once it sees whatever it thinks is a prompt. This generally goes fairly well, but there are endless ways in which it can fail. The two most common are: # The mud sends you a message AFTER you send a direction command, but before the room name/etc are printed to your screen. #* This can happen if you're casting spells/using specials, queuing more than one move command at a time, NPCs are walking around or talking, etc etc etc. An NPC autoattacks you on room enter.. or in other words all the time. # The mud sends you a prompt before the room name/etc is sent to you because you've sent other commands recently, other than movements, or are queuing movement commands. Luckily CMUD provides us with ways to manually tell the automapper when we see these things using the #TAG command.. so the easiest thing to do is to create a trigger which detects room names/exits and then tell the mud that line IS ALSO a prompt, so it stops looking for other things which would, for whatever Zugg inspired reason, always overwrite what we told it is correct. The trigger suite **PLEASE NOTE THIS TRIGGER SUITE IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD ON THE Map files PAGE** The first trigger is a pattern to recognize brief room names:This trigger is made priority 1, it should happen before anything else. You can alternatively set #STEP (which sends the next step) to #OK (which verifies a step was completed) if you are using safe walk or slow walk. The second trigger is to tell the mud when movement fails, that it should not count a movement during a walk, or make a new room if you are mapping. These are done with the #NODIR and #NOMAP commands, respectively. Below is a simple trigger which includes all of Dawn's fail messages (Huh?/What?/etc) but you can also include movement fails from places like the abyss or the elven forests. I keep those in a second trigger. The priority here should happen AFTER 1, but other than that is not really important. I use 2. Lastly there is an alias to locating your location on the map, and setting it using #TE. The automapper has a function for doing this, but it doesn't work well. This alias/command finds your current room in your maps, and sets your location as being there. If there are multiple choices it tries to set you to the closest one to whereever the map things you are. Configuring the automapper **PLEASE NOTE THIS CONFIGURATION IS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD ON THE Map files PAGE** Open the automapper, go to config->configuration settings * Appearance ** UNCLICK 'Show untested links as gray' - this just colors all links you haven't manually walked over as grey, and is super annoying. Draw X/symbol are useful. * Configuration ** UNCLICK: Room Name, Room Description and Room Exits. We are providing those ourselves. ** Under MUD Prompt feel free to let it Auto detect, or to specify the prompt Char/pattern you use yourself. This doesn't matter too much because we are telling the MUD that the room-name line is also a prompt to stop confusion. Use the 'complex prompt' option if you are setting the pattern yourself and it includes HP/GP, etc. ** UNCLICK 'Wait for prompt in XXX speedwalking' - all this does it break things. * Interface ** UNCLICK "only autoconnect using keypad" options, it just makes mapping awful. Autoconnect connects all obvious exits from a newly created room to matching exists from rooms around it. This makes speed-walking POSSIBLE, the walking algorithm wont use unconnected links. ** SELECT "autoconnect all directions". HINT is just whats displayed when you mouse-hover over a room. * Strings and Doors - UNCLICK EVERYTHING, set "look command" to glance. * Speedwalking ** I suggest "fast" mode, though using "slow" you can technically run a simple XP bot using #pause and #start commands. I've -never- got it to work well. If you want to use slow or safe, change #STEP to #OK in the room-pattern trigger. ** Match room-name, or disable. The #OK/#STEP in teh room-pattern trigger will move you. ** UNCLICK 'center map' it will lag you, as well as 'update map on each step'. Highlight path is nice. ** Other tips: have the map zoomed in or it redrawing every step will lag you. 'Maximum steps in safe mode' determines how many steps the mapper sends to the mud at once, I always have it at 0, but feel free to play around with it. Go to options->general->scripting * General Scripting ** Delay between speedwalking steps - Set to 225 (this is sort of as fast as you can walk without queueing in fast mode). If you are using safe mode with multiple sets, set this to 0, or whatever you want. * Slow Walking ** I recommend increasing the timeout value and unselecting "Timeout aborts walk". This helps if you suddenly had a big lag increase.. If you hit the timeout value with the "Timeout aborts walk" option UNSELECTED, the mud simply sends the next queued walk direction. ** No need to include strings to trigger successful slow walk (the #OK) command, since we have #OK or #STEP in the room-pattern trigger.